I hit send on the last email, closed the laptop, and that was the admin done for the morning.
I hadn't written a single one of them.
My AI agent had.
It's called Grok Bot, and if you've used ChatGPT, it's a bit like that, except it's plugged into my old emails, my customer records and my accounting software.
So by the time I sit down, it's already been through the inbox, worked out what each customer is after, and drafted the reply.
All I need to do is read them and hit send, with the odd one needing small changes.
It only takes 5 to 10 minutes and she's all done for the morning.
That used to be a couple of hours a day, easy.
And it was never the reading.
It was the replies, because every one meant looking something up, where's their order at, where's the invoice, and then writing it all out properly.
I'm no maths expert, but that's more than a full working day back every week.
The bit that still gets me is the tone.
If I'm casual with someone, it remembers that and talks to them the same way, because it learnt how I write from my old emails.
It's not perfect.
Sometimes it over answers and regurgitates what the customer's already sent me, so I cut it back.
And it never sends anything on its own.
My worry at the start was it'd send something stupid to a customer, so it can't.
It writes, I read, I hit send.
That's a big part of how I run a business that makes over a million dollars a year in profit with no staff.
And to be honest, the rest of the day is pretty chill and boring.
It sends me my project list, which is every order on the go and where it's up to, and I make sure it's all up to date.
If I've made a sale, I tell it to do the invoice and it's done in seconds, which for someone who hates admin is a dream.
Then I'll go for a coffee and a surf.
The kids get home about three, I hang out with them, take them to sport, and we're home for dinner.
There's still plenty of work in a business that buys and sells real stuff.
For years the boring answer has been freelancers and systems.
I used to have a warehouse, and what annoyed me most was having to be there every time a delivery turned up.
So it went.
My stock sits in storage units now, and the staff there have a key and open up for the driver.
Busy month, I rent another unit.
Quiet month, I hand one back.
For years a freelancer chased the freight and the paperwork on every order, and they just invoiced me for the work they did.
One quiet patch, work dropped off for a few weeks and their bill dropped right along with it.
That's when it hit me.
If I'd hired someone for that job, I'd have been paying a full wage for them to sit there twiddling their thumbs.
When that freelancer finished up, the AI agent had already made the job way easier, so I took it on myself.
It's not all upside.
With no staff, nobody runs the business while I'm away, so on holidays I still do about half an hour of emails in the morning before she's all done for the day.
And freelancers come with a catch too.
You do lose a bit of control, so how I treat them and how I talk to them matters a lot.
Rugby taught me that one.
And I'm not anti staff.
In a lot of businesses they're essential, especially if you want to grow.
If there was enough work there to justify someone's salary, then by all means, I'd hire someone tomorrow.
But if you told me you were about to put on your first employee, I'd get you to walk me through your business step by step first.
Who does what, and where this new person would fit.
Then I'd ask whether a tool, a freelancer or an AI agent could take care of it.
Sometimes it still needs a person, and that's fine.
But sometimes the headcount doesn't need to be as big as you think it does.
The reason I bother with all this is pretty simple.
When I was younger, my biggest fear was ending up in a normal job, asking for annual leave, coming home late and missing my kids grow up.
Then I got into business and found out it can be the hardest job of all, with the worst boss you've ever had.
So I set mine up for freedom of time from day dot.
My kids are only young once, and you never get that time back.
That's what the closed laptop is for.
Dane